Observations on politics, news, culture and humor

Russia goes nuts over religion

I’ve spent a good deal of time in Russia. It’s a cool country, badly misunderstood and underappreciated by Westerners. I spent most of my time there learning the language, exploring the streets and eating food cooked by Russian host moms. I didn’t notice too much religion. Sure, there were always icons on bus driver’s dashboards and in many homes. I would see black-robed, fuzzy-bearded monks out walking every so often. And in St. Petersburg, the Orthodox cathedrals stood out as beautiful in a city already distinguished for its beauty. But religion seemed to be less of an issue there than it is here in the U.S., so the news out of Russia this weekend surprised me.

The Moscow Times has a good rundown of the situation here. The barest of summaries:

A Moscow court convicted two art curators of inciting religious hatred by organizing an exhibit that included paintings depicting Jesus as Mickey Mouse and Lenin and slapped them with heavy fines, widening a rift between the secular and religious communities.

The verdict in the highly publicized case appeared to satisfy no one, with the artistic community seeing it as an infringement on free speech, and Russian Orthodox believers, who had hoped for a prison sentence, saying the fines were too lenient.

We knew the record on democracy and the press was far from pretty, but now this, too? Like the poop-smeared Virgin Mary art show put on in NYC some years ago, I would venture to guess that most of the art in the show was probably low-rent crap just meant to shock. As bad as the art might have been and as offensive as the ultra-Orthodox might have found it, it remains a human right to express oneself, even to the point of shocking “blasphemy.” I’m stunned by the hypocrisy of the Orthodox community on this matter, too–they should know that any state strong enough to protect them from “blasphemy” is also strong enough to decimate them and control them as the Soviets did for seventy years.

Russian philosopher Michail Ryklin wrote a pre-verdict profile of the courtroom scene for the New Humanist. His was the best piece I read on the case because it wasn’t just a recitation of facts and gave some sense of the personalities at work. The Economist put up a good blog post, basically saying that things could have been worse. Agreed, but this is still not an acceptable outcome. NYT also did a pre-verdict rundown of the case, but this is one of those rare cases where I think The Times got outreported by people more closely connected to the case.

You know what’s the worst possible response, though? Moscow prosecutors trying to ban “Orthodox Christianity or death” t-shirts seen outside of the courthouse. Look, we get it–the judge ruled the art show was extremist, you want to point out the hypocrisy in not seeing the t-shirts as extremist. These shirts are ridiculous and badly misunderstand the same Christianity they claim to espouse, but the people wearing them have just as much an inalienable right to free expression as do the artists behind the anti-religious art. Even joking about setting the muscle of the state against these guys is not a funny joke since it gives legitimacy to the state’s power in a realm where it should have none.

I think everybody needs to go read some Tolstoy and buy a ticket on the nonaggression train.